


Please Tell Me I Don't Have To Promise

by shipperofinsanity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Miscarriage, tw: miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1662542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipperofinsanity/pseuds/shipperofinsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short drabble, 1500 words. Dramione. In the time after the war, long after, Hermione and Draco have found each other, and found something far, far worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Tell Me I Don't Have To Promise

She sank into the tub, and the hot water steamed and hissed painfully when her skin slid through it; a few pockets of air popped quietly as the currents stirred them away. The porcelain against her back was hard and cold and smooth. She shuddered at the touch, and felt the growing condensation where she leaned against it from the steam of the rippling water. She stretched her legs out - it had been far, far too long since she'd had a bathtub large enough to stretch in - and wiggled her toes widely. They created tiny swirls in the liquid above them, and she watched with detached fascination as they slowly unwound themselves into stiller water.

She shook her hair back and slid down in the water. The cold of the untouched air vanished and her hair quickly grew both heavy and weightless as the water soaked into every crevice and found the roots of hair that had grown so old so quickly; she didn't even have to pull her knees up, she just laid on the bottom of the tub and floated in the middle, holding her breath as the water washed over her face. Lights danced the way it does through water on her closed eyelids, and when she came up the chill hit her again, and the water left on her face became rivulets, tiny streams trickling and dropping their way to the sea below them. Each tiny plop of water hitting water reverberated in the thin but sturdy walls of the bathroom.

_This is happening, isn't it? It's real._

And this bathroom was large. The tub itself was as big as her bathroom had been before this. She could easily have fit her toilet and her shower where she was laying now; but the pristine, cream-colored tub stretched on and filled quickly with water that smelled and looked like nothing but thick air, and simple though the spout and knobs may have been, they stood out above her - there were no claws holding up the tub, but a wide rectangular base that melded into a long platform that collided with the mirror that had become the entirety of the fourth wall. In a way, it created a stage, and she was in the orchestral pit; the water twirled about in a symphony of its own, and should she start to drain it, the crescendo would begin and end the music.

She knew the air was still. The water bounced what little light there was onto the cieling, and it glittered down at her excitedly, as if telling her that her soaking in the hot water was the most interesting thing they'd seen. If she hadn't been so tired, she would have smiled back at it. Her eyes followed the intricate pattern on the wall, through its swirls and twists and leaves and blooms until she came to a stop at the tile of the floor, where her clothes were shed beneath the towel hanging on the rack. Next she observed the towel, and the bar on which it hung; and above that, her gaze lingered on the small window, set deep into the wall and locked tightly against the winter air from outside.

_The doctor said it was a boy. We're going to have a boy!_

Snow sliced the air outside, and what she could see of the trees through the bliss of white was dancing tightly with the wind. She sank down further into the water so her chin just touched it, and tilted her head back so the snow lowered itself out of her closing vision and she dipped once more underneath the surface, to hear nothing but the soft trickle of the plumbing in her encased ears.

There was a soft and muffled knock that sounded, and she sat up, the water running in rivers and splashes down from her. She didn't speak, but waited for him to, because she thought he would. The echo of all sound was discerning - she focused on his voice, that slipped under the crack of the door and bounced around the walls, and breathed evenly, despite the slow and uneven pulse she could feel everywhere. "Hermione?" it asked, and the sound slithered around her like the name itself could grip her lungs until they popped. The waves of his question, unspoken but for herself, bounced off of her, but the words itself leeched into the water and settled into her skin.

_Wake up. Wake up, I'm bleeding. Wake up._

She slowly moved to the back of the tub and laid against the cold porcelain again, so that a shiver threatened to shake the water again and cold bumps raised on her bared skin. "Come in." Speaking felt like her tongue was catching snowflakes - cold, and prickling gently, but melting wetly moments later. She heard every wave her encasement fluttered against the tub in sevenfold.

The door didn't creak or whine when it was opened. There was a momentary sound of the latch being opened as the knob turned, and then it glided smoothly an inch above the tile, his fingers falling to his side still by the time he was in view. He'd done the exact same thing so many times that the lack of his head cocked to the side just a bit and his frame leaning antagonizingly on the doorway was jarring enough to wrap its way around her throat and squeeze, just for a moment, so when she swallowed she did so thickly and loudly.

_There's too much scar tissue._

He didn't flinch, but he didn't have to. She knew what it sounded like. And despite knowing that she could explain that she wasn't, despite knowing he'd believe her if she did, despite knowing that she didn't need to, the frustration of knowing she appeared to be crying when she wasn't changed the state of her throat, and her eyes, and her hands, and though the spout was empty, the tub accepted the filling droplets that spilled over skin and sank into ripples of its own creation.

And he was there. He didn't rush to her or kneel beside her or take her hand, but he was there. Standing, watching, waiting. He knew what would happen should he approach; he knew what would happen if he left. That was the basis of their understanding; learning through failure and daring not fail again. He didn't speak, but let her speak in a language that consisted of bathwater and saltwater, a hydrolanguage, words forming in ripples, syllables in waves, meaning in tears.

_It's my fault._

She shook. The water around her shook, until she was certain it was looming over her, about to crash, freezing like the snow that fell so gaily outside. Ice formed on the outskirts of her vision, shifting, melting, freezing again as her eyes swivelled, blinked, tried to clear themselves. Her breath stole the warmth from the lake she drowned in and leaked out of her eyes - solid gas, liquid hurt. The bath wasn't cresting, wasn't going to swallow her whole. Something else was. There were teeth, large teeth, huge cones with sharp tips, all closing, closing in, about to slice through her stomach and rip her in half.

No, there were no teeth. No waves, no teeth. She was insane, she was crazy. Demented. The stale, calm smell of the bathrub and the wind howling at them outside was muted, barely resent. Nothing was present. The floor was still tiled, the door still yards away from where she sat. He leaned against the doorframe and waited out the death of her, wated for her body to become more of a corpse than it was. Dead, dead, dead.

_Half of me is missing._

He spoke. It wasn't demanding, nor was it gentle - almost apathetic, but in his tone lied the kind of emptiness that is anything but empty. Not carefully crafted, not thrown together in a whirlwind of grief, just present, much like him. Cold, and statuesqe, like her. "I can see all of you." It wasn't perverse in the slightest. It wasn't meant to be an bservation, no; it was a comfort, the only comfort she could accept. Not lies that threatened to unravel like string - "It'll be okay, Hermione" and "It's not the end of the world, Hermione" - and not useless whispers of "I'm so sorry" or "We're all here for you". It didn't matter who was there for her, so long as only half of her was there. She wasn't present like he was. He was there; not for her, not for him. She wasn't there at all. But he could see her, and he could tell her that.

She swallowed. "My stomach?"

_I feel so gone. There's... I'm gone._

"Your stomach is there."

"The baby?"

_I couldn't carry him. I can't carry anyone, my arms are dead and my stomach is dead and nothing inside of me works. I don't work, I can't work, I can't, please I can't.  
_

"The baby isn't you."

"Promise?"

_I love you. I do._

"Please tell me I don't have to promise."


End file.
